Fly Like a G6: The Runner's High

I have to admit it: I listen to crap-filled rap songs with shitty language that are mostly about drugs and misogynistic sex and drinking and other unsavory stuff. And I like them. Even my teen and tweenaged kids are frequently horrified by what I will listen to. My son once famously went through all of my workout tunes and looked up the lyrics online, growing more and more hysterical with each obscenity and satanic-message-filled song until he was literally howling with laughter. Why is it that all the raunchiest or bad-message songs are the ones that get you going? Hey, I told him, at least it's not like what I listened to when I was a teenager (how about "I Don't Care About You, F**! You" for a song title?)

But really, deep down it disturbs me that so much good music goes to promoting such dangerous pastimes. Am I sounding like an old fuddy duddy yet? Probably so. Or as the title of this interesting documentary film that explores the Christiam music phenomenon asks "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?" And I do sometimes put the radio on the Christian music station, but lets face it: most of it sucks. Yeah, send me straight down to the hot place for saying it, but there's nothing on there that will get your blood pumping like Motorhead's Ace of Spades. Nothing.

But today when I was running up our local mountain trail over and over and over just for kicks and grins, what I was thinking was how sad it is that the rappers and the rockers and the listeners of this stuff don't know just how high you can get when you push your body hard. Whether you call it a "runner's high" or an "endorphin rush", it's powerful stuff. Our body creates these amazing chemicals that act on our brain as an opiate and leave us feeling giddy and just downright blissed out. After a good set of hill repeats, I'm like Sherlock Holmes in an opium den, feeling better than any rapper "gettin slizzard" on sizzurp, whose side-effects include euphoria, lethargy and extreme drowsiness. Hmmm, sounds like me after a session at the track or at home in the gym. No thanks on the drugs please, just pass the kettlebells.